The Hate U Give Enters the Ranks of Great YA Novels

The bestselling young-adult book by Angie Thomas centers around a 16-year-old girl who sees her childhood friend fatally shot by a police officer.

by Anna DiamondMar 28, 20173 minutes

Source: Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins

“They finally put a sheet over Khalil. He can’t breathe under it. I can’t breathe.”

The last words of Eric Garner, adopted and amplified by the Black Lives Matter movement, echo again in the early pages of Angie Thomas’s young-adult novel The Hate U Give. By the time she’s 16, Starr Carter, the protagonist of the book, has lost two of her childhood friends to gun violence: one by a gang drive-by, and one by a cop.

As the sole witness to her friend Khalil’s fatal shooting by a police officer, Starr is overwhelmed by the pressure of testifying before a grand jury and the responsibility of